In Short Fiction
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday June 6, 2009
DON'T LOOK TWICEBy Andrew GrossWilliam Morrow, 384pp, $32.99Andrew Gross collaborated on five novels with James Patterson before going solo with his own thrillers, of which this is his third. Detective Ty Hauck is paying for petrol in a New York gas station, his teenage daughter in tow, when a drive-by shooting endangers everyone in the store and kills a federal prosecutor from the Department of Justice.This is just the first in a veritable banquet of red herrings as, while simultaneously dealing with a less-than-satisfactory private life, Hauck digs deeper into a complex mystery that seems spread across half of New England. It involves more and more characters, many of them turning up dead: police, detectives, developers, gamblers, lawyers, politicians and anyone else who might conceivably be involved in a gigantic scam, including Hauck's own brother Warren.But neither Hauck nor the reader is prepared for the truth about the spider at the centre of this dense web. The novel is so true to genre as to be almost a parody - but not quite.SWEEPING UP GLASSBy Carolyn WallQuercus, 336pp, $29.95This beautifully written novel chronicles a desperately hard time and place: small-town Kentucky during the years between the two world wars. In the bitter winter of 1938 the heroine and narrator, Olivia Harker, now in her 40s, finds several elements of her past coming to a head or coming back to haunt her: her precious grandson is in danger of being taken away; her childhood sweetheart is newly bereaved; her father is apparently not buried where she always thought he was; and she doesn't understand the terrifying hostility of the mysterious men who are killing off the silver-faced wolves she loves in the woods she also loves.The novel canvasses several bitterly divisive issues in American history, notably the Depression, the murderous activities of the Ku Klux Klan and its rejects, and the drug-like lure of Hollywood glamour and dollars for a certain kind of young woman. There are also some dramatic scenes of child abuse, violence and family tragedy, soit's just as well there's a fairlyhappy ending.MY HUSBAND'S SWEETHEARTSBy Bridget AsherBantam, 304pp, $32.95When 50-year-old Artie Shoreman learns that he is dying, his wife, Lucy, has been living apart from him for six months after accidentally discovering his infidelity and then learning from him that it was actually only one of three. Reluctantly flying home to nurse him in his last illness, Lucy is persuaded by Artie, who makes the suggestion at least partly in jest, to call up his old lovers - "They were there for the good times; where are they now?" - to help her nurse him.So, aided by alcohol, she makes the calls and to everyone's astonishment, some of them turn up. This is a seductive book, with few literary pretensions but featuring, in the way that the story is worked out, some interesting and complex ideas about love, generosity and family.It has one particularly colourful character: Lucy's petite and pushy powerhouse of a mother, the quintessential American "mom", who is an anchor for all the free-floating emotion in Artie's house as his wife and sweethearts come and go around his bedside.PICK OF THE WEEK BEING EMILYBy Anne DonovanCanongate, 304pp, $23.95Fiona O'Connell lives in a Glasgow tenement with her parents and her line-dancing twin sisters, Shona and Mona. But tragedy strikes the family while Fiona is still at high school and things in the household slowly deteriorate to a point at which, as often happens, tragedy breeds more tragedy.So it might seem strange to say that some of this book is very funny, particularly given Fiona's passion for the most tragic of the Bronte sisters, the fierce and mysterious Emily. But Anne Donovan is a gifted storyteller who has won awards - her first novel, Buddha Da, was shortlisted for several major literary prizes - and she's well able to tell a sad family saga in a wryly entertaining way.As a schoolgirl Fiona dreams of being Emily Bronte and as she grows up and works out what she wants to do with her life, Emily remains an iconic figure to her. Both are artists, both are ferociously private young women devoted to their families and Fiona's true love is someone she thinks of as a kind of Heathcliff: "Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same."But the most impressive thing about this novel is its account of Fiona's development as an artist; the reader is led gently by the hand in learning how to understand and appreciate her particular talents, her chosen medium and materials and the way in which she tries to make sense of her life in her work.There's also a cast of highly individualised and precisely realised characters, including Fiona's ultra-civilised gay brother, Patrick, and a young Sikh who speaks in a broad Glasgow accent and turns up at a wedding in full highland dress.But it's only fair to warn the reader that this book is narrated by Fiona, whose Glasgow accent is written out phonetically. And 300 pages of sentences such as "Even when the priest drapped the water on her heid she only gied a wee cry" can be very hard-going for readers who can't instinctively hear that accent in their heads.
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald